SEVEN
Arjuna asked, “Prakriti and purusha, kshetra and the knower of the kshetra; what are they, Krishna?”
Krishna said, “The body is the kshetra, the field. The seeds of karma are sown in it and their harvest reaped. Munis say that he who knows the kshetra watches what happens within his body. Arjuna, I am the knower of the kshetra in every body. Discernment between field and knower is the highest knowledge.
Listen to the nature of the field and the knower.
Prakriti, the cosmos, first; then, ego, intellect, the ten senses—five of the body, five in the mind—the five subjects of sense, pleasure and pain, desire and revulsion, the entire organism, intelligence and will: all this is the field of kshetra.
Humility, honesty, non-violence, patience, self-effacement and the perception that birth, death, old age, illness and pain are evil; detachment, no dependence on a wife, children or a home and absolute equal-mindedness to pleasure and pain; unswerving devotion to me, a life in solitary parts, far from the crowd; constancy in the yoga of the atman, insight: all this is knowledge.”
Weightless, always on the verge of an explosion of freedom, Arjuna was carried upon the wave of light that crested Krishna’s song. The Pandava surrendered to the magic absolutely; it held him like its child.
“I will tell you how to reach the Brahman who has no beginning or end and is transcendent, eternal. He is beyond both what is and what is not. His hands and feet are everywhere, in all times; his heads, faces and eyes are on every side. His ear is this world and He lives in the world as well, all-enfolding.
He moves the senses, but is beyond them. He is perfectly unattached, yet supports the universe. He is free of the gunas of nature, but enjoys them. He is within every creature and beyond them all, always working, ever still, subtle beyond the mind’s grasp: so near us, so utterly remote.
He is one and with every creature, at once, creating them, nurturing them, destroying them and creating them afresh. He is the light of lights, beyond darkness. He is knowledge, all wisdom’s only object and its sole purpose, innate in every heart.
Nature and soul, prakriti and purusha, both have no beginning. The soul in nature enjoys the infinite essences in nature. Attachment causes the soul to incarnate in wombs of good and evil.
The witness is the Brahman in the body. He is the atman, the last self and the final experiencer. No matter how a man has lived, if he once experiences the Brahman directly, beyond nature, he will not be reborn.
By dhyana, some reach the atman, some by gyana and others by the way of karma. Yet others are ignorant of these three paths and they resort to worship. They, too, cross over the sea of death by their bhakti, their devotion to what they have heard.
All that live do so by the union between the kshetra and its knower, nature and soul, prakriti and Brahman. The man who sees God abiding in all things and all beings, God dwelling deathless in the mortal world, he truly sees.
The man who sees that only the gunas of nature act and never the atman, he truly sees. For the soul is actless. When a man sees that manifold, multifarious being is centered in just the One and how from that One it spreads, he attains the Brahman.
The Brahman has no beginning; it is before and beyond the gunas. Arjuna, the Brahman lives in the body, but it does not act, nor do actions touch it: just as the all-pervasive ether is untainted, immaculate, because it is so subtle.
Even as the sun does the world, the Lord of the field illumines every kshetra. The man who sees the difference between the kshetra and its knower, who sees the liberation of man from nature, he becomes free.”
Arjuna was awash on that sea of calm, the Song of God. Krishna’s song radiated shafts of light that pierced the marmas, the fine portals to the Pandava’s spirit and through him entered distant men in unborn times, on strangest battlefields. Arjuna heard Krishna within his heart, under his skin now, speaking to those multitudes, beginning his eternal work of Salvation again.
“Listen to the wisdom of ages. The sages on whom it dawned became perfect; they were freed from the bonds of the body. They became like me. They are not born at creation, they are not destroyed at the dissolution.
Great Nature is my womb. I cast the seed of all things into myself. Of any being born into any world, Arjuna, I am the father who casts the seed and prakriti is the mother. Sattva, rajas and tamas, the three gunas of nature, bring the deathless dweller into the body.
Sattva is pure and reveals the atman by blemishless light. Yet, sattva binds with attachment to goodness and to knowledge.
Rajas is attraction, passion sprung from desire and attachment. It binds the soul to the body with hunger for action.
Tamas is dullness, born of ignorance; it is blind delusion. It binds with darkness, sloth and stupor.
From time to time, age to age, sattva dominates, then rajas and tamas, too, prevailing over the other two gunas.
When the light of knowledge shines at all the body’s gates, sattva prevails. Unrest and greed are the signs of rajas and complete delusion dominates when tamas rules.
If death comes when sattva prevails, the soul attains to the higher world of beings that know God. If death comes when rajas rules, the soul is reborn among those who live the life of power and action. And if a man dies when tamas reigns, he is born among the deluded, once more.
The good rise upwards, the passionate remain in the middle realms and the tamasic sink; they devolve down to the realms of darkness.”
Arjuna felt a seismic disturbance in his heart. It was the labor of the ending of a yuga and the birth of another; and he could not fathom it. Krishna, who saw it clearly, Krishna, who had caused it, sang on to his bhakta. The ripples of enlightenment were on his lips and his depths were like the ocean’s, unmoving. The Dark One calmed Arjuna, who was churned by the spirits of the two ages at whose very edge they stood, out on Kurukshetra.
“When the dweller in the body transcends the gunas that cause the body, he is liberated from life and death, decay and pain. He becomes immortal.”
His terror quieted again, Arjuna said, “How do we know the one who is beyond the gunas? How does he live? How does he transcend the gunas?”
“He does not despise illumination, restless activity or dark delusion, when they prevail. Nor does he long for them, when they cease.
For him pain and pleasure are alike. He never wavers. For him a clod of earth, a stone and a bar of gold are the same; blame and praise are the same to him, because he is established in the atman’s inner peace. He who has relinquished the initiative of action, but lives in harmony with his nature, he has grown beyond the conflicting gunas.
The man who is devoted to me transcends the gunas. He becomes the Brahman, because I am that abode of bliss.”
Krishna’s every word was a scripture.
“The everlasting Aswattha, the Tree of Life, has its roots in heaven and its branches down in the earth below. Its leaves are the Vedas.” He spoke in some wonder, as if his own birth’s greater reasons were being revealed to him, even now: the secrets of incarnation being laid bare to the Avatara. At the end of his lonely anguish, sublime calm stole over him.
“Like the banyan’s, the branches of the Tree of Life reach above and below, nourished by the gunas, down even into the world of men.
Its true form is never seen in this world: not its beginning, its end, or its nature. The bhakta cuts down the tree with the sword of detachment, saying, ‘I seek refuge not in the tree, but in the Primal One from whom this current of the world flows.’
He who is free of pride and delusion, who has conquered the evil of attachment, whose lusts are stilled, who is devoted to me, he who is freed of the opposites of pleasure and pain, comes to the changeless state.
Not fire, not the moon or the sun illumines the self-lustrous Being who is my abode. He who attains me shall never be reborn.”